Rebbetzin
Almost Self-Reliant
There are two doelings, and one buckling.
One of the doelings looks just like her mom!!
The babies were born on Friday 4-1-11. This was Shadow's fouth kidding, but... she had never nursed her babies! They were taken from her at birth and bottle fed.
The delivery was fast, she cleaned them up, There were three of us there for the birth, when everything seemed fine, we all left Shadow and the kids to rest up from the excitement.
Two of us came back about three or four hours later, to find Shadow's udder engorged and she would kick at the kids if they tried to nurse!
GREAT!! So... we didn't have a bottle at the goat pen, made a phone call to the owner of the goats, to have her bring a bottle or two to the goat pen. She couldn't be reached. What to do? We milked out of the wonderful, yellow, sticky Colostrum. But how to get it into the kids? Hmmm...
Well in the birthing kit is a baby bulb syringe..... It was clean. So.. that is what we used to get the milk into the babies! A very slow process to be sure!!
Finally we were able to get a call through to the owner, and her sister brought over a bottle. Now we were in business!
But, none of us could really see having to bottle feed when Shadow was perfectly capable of feeding the kids. So...
Next morning Shadow and the kids were taken to the milking shed, given some grain, then we tied up one of her back legs, so if she kicked she would be in danger of falling down. After a bit of a fight, she stood still and let us "stick" the kids on her.
This moring I was able to go into the birthing pen, and she was nice and calm and let me put the kids on to nurse.
We are hoping by the weekend, after four times a day being shown what is expected, the kids will be nursing on their own.
Here is Shadow..the mom
And here is Punkin'
Aren't baby goats just the cutest things!!
